"MA'AM, CAN I TALK TO YOU?" PASTORAL CARE WITH SURVIVORS OF SEXUALIZED

VIOLENCE AT THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ACADEMY

KRISTEN J. LESLIE YALE UNIVERSITY DIVINITY SCHOOL

In October of 2003,1 was invited by the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) chaplains to help them improve their pastoral skills with sexual assault survivors. My research had been a helpful resource for one of the chaplains, who believed my work could be tailored to their environment. As the chaplain reported, "We need assistance in working with our assault survivors, but telling them to take some time to reflect, journal, or pray will not work in this pressured environment. The cadets have no unscheduled time, no right to privacy, and no desire to be perceived as different from their classmates." Given these definitions of time, space, and identity, my task was to understand how the USAFA environment affected the defining of and pastoral attending to the realities of sexualized violence survivors.

Background The United States Air Force Academy is a military academy and an

institution of higher education dedicated to granting bachelor degrees and training commissioned officers for the United States Air Force. Located on a photogenic campus in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USAFA has a population of around 4000 students, or cadets, ages 18- 24. Less than 17% of these cadets are women. To be admitted to USAFA each cadet has to obtain a congressional nomination. At the successful conclusion of their four-year education, a cadet is commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force and required to complete a minimum of five years of military service.

Since 2003 USAFA has publicly struggled with a climate and culture of crisis. From 1993 to 2003, 142 Academy cadets filed formal allegations of rape and sexual assault (on average 14 a year). In that period, Academy officials held no perpetrators accountable while formally charging many of the victims with Honor Code violations (drinking violations and fraternizing with upper class cadets). Female

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victims finally had enough, taking their stories to the press and to their congressional representatives. With constant press coverage and multiple congressional hearings, USAFA was pressed into responding. In April 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appointed former Republican Congressperson Tillie Fowler to head a committee to investigate the mishandling of the allegations. The findings of the investigation—the Fowler Report—became the motivating force for USAFA to institute overall changes in their officer-training program. It started with a purging of the Academy's top commanders; for years they had heard the stories and excused the violence. After top officials were replaced, the newly installed officials moved on to policy changes. The Fowler Report was especially interested in investigating the progress of the Agenda for Change, a forty-nine-point document issued in March 2003 by James Roche, Secretary of the Air Force, and General John Jumper, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, providing directives and initiatives aimed at improving the culture of the Academy. Attention to the Agenda for Change motivated a number of the USAFA officials and departments, including the chaplains, to improve their services. The chaplains recognized the crucial role they could play with survivors and yet they knew they were not adequately equipped to be effective.

The purpose of this article is to explore pastoral care to survivors of sexual assault at the Air Force Academy. Many of the pastoral issues presented at USAFA related to sexual assault are no different from concerns faced in any pastoral care context. Sexual assault by an acquaintance causes a person to experience brokenness in the form of loss of normalcy; alienation from one's body; feelings of betrayal, self-blame, and confusion; and loss of a supportive community.1 Pastoral care with a survivor requires being aware of trauma responses, social pressures, distorted perceptions, and available resources. At the Air Force Academy, pastoral care with survivors must also consider the role of privileged communications, the Honor Code, reporting, working on an interdisciplinary response team, and risk management. After addressing these issues, I will conclude with some specific pastoral implications for pastoral care to survivors of sexualized violence at the Air Force Academy.

Privileged Communications The ability to offer privileged communications to survivors

of sexualized violence is crucial to the work of USAFA chaplains. Privileged communication in the Air Force is

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... any communication to a chaplain or chaplain assistant given as a formal act of religion or as a matter of conscience; that is, any communication that is made in confidence to a chaplain acting as a spiritual advisor or to a chaplain assistant aiding as a spiritual advisor, and that is not intended to be disclosed to third persons other than those to whom disclosure furthers the purpose of the communication, or to those reasonably necessary for the transmission of the communication. (Military Rule of Evidence 503 and AR 165)2

Unlike the civilian world, absolute privilege for Air Force chaplains is not subject to the limits of a confidential relationship (suicide, homicide, child abuse, elder abuse, or abuse where consent is not possible). The privilege of disclosure belongs to the "penitent," and any disclosure without their express consent is subject to punitive actions. This is true regardless of the sacramental nature of the communication (Air Force Instruction 52-101, 18 October 2004). Providing a pastoral relationship that can hold (and not disclose) traumatic stories filled with fear, shame, anger, and confusion is a crucial element of pastoral care with assault survivors. Scott Berkowitz, president and founder of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), has testified to Congress that when professionals can provide prompt, quality, confidential help, survivors are (1) more likely to report their assailants and (2) more likely to report in a shorter time frame (Berkowitz, 2004). Increased reporting leads to more prosecutions, fewer incidents of assault, better prevention, and better intervention. When chaplains can offer the assurance of privileged communications, survivors are more likely to seek and get help.

While chaplains at USAFA operate with the right of privileged communications, the referral sources they use in helping survivors of sexual assault do not. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) grants absolute privilege in matters of conscience solely to the chaplain-penitent relationship. The attorney-client and psychotherapist-patient relationships have only limited privilege and the physician-patient relationship (whether the patient is civilian or military) has none.3 When medical and mental health professionals (including victim advocates) are not guaranteed the right of privileged communication and are required to report any knowledge of sexualized violence to Academy officials, chaplains can neither guarantee a safe referral source nor rely on important colleagues for consultations. By limiting privileged communication for everyone but chaplains, the Air Force in effect

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requires the chaplains to be the main source of information for legal, psychological, medical, and investigative matters related to sexualized violence.

In the civilian world the issue of confidentiality as it relates to religious professionals has reflected only minor changes as affected by the outcome of legal proceedings. Under the auspices of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the policy of privileged communication changes regularly. On March 16, 2004 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz announced that the Pentagon's policy on privileged communication had changed. He stated that the Pentagon policy "prefers complete reporting of sexual assaults to activate both victim's services and accountability actions. However, recognizing that a mandate of complete reporting may represent a barrier for victims to gain access to services when the victim desires no command or law enforcement involvement, there is a need to provide an option for confidential reporting" (Associated Press, 2005). This suggests movement in the right direction. The problem, however, is that in the past two years the USAFA policy on privileged communications has changed numerous times. This leaves chaplains confused and assault survivors unable to trust the ever-changing system. In the end, any changes made for the sake of the survivors may only bring about good results if the chaplains keep abreast of the complex legal policies. Given the pressures put on chaplains this is an unrealistic expectation.

Honor Code The Honor Code plays a central role in the life of cadets at

USAFA. "We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does." The Honor Code underlies all expected behaviors and all recommended punishments. Honor is considered paramount for cadets training to be officers. Therefore USAFA holds its cadets (officers-in-training) to the highest standards. In my visits with cadets, I regularly heard them talk about the higher standards of honor to which they were being held. They accepted this as right and good. When cadets behave dishonorably, they do a disservice to themselves, their classmates, and the wider Air Force. A dishonorable cadet will not make a good officer. Behaviors deemed dishonorable are punishable by reprimand, expulsion, and prison time. Honorable behavior follows regulations, attends to unit cohesion (before self-preservation), and reflects positively on the wider Air Force.

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Given the centrality of such a compelling force, it is noteworthy that until the 2003 Agenda for Change, officials at USAFA did not regard sexual assault as a dishonorable matter. In the ten-year period when 142 formal assault allegations were filed at the Academy, no Honor Code charges ever followed. With the Fowler Report and Agenda for Change (and public scrutiny brought about by news coverage and congressional hearings), the approach shifted, and the full weight of the Honor Code was brought to these allegations of sexual assault.

Application of the Honor Code to the sexual assault cases initially gave those USAFA officials committed to change confidence that a solution to the problem was within reach. The Honor Code had previously helped them establish high standards at the Academy and would now help them return honor to their environment. It started with the basics: Sexual assault is dishonorable. Those who prey on cadets act dishonorably and must be punished and/or purged from the Academy. Sexual assaults violate an entire unit. In an environment that hallows unit cohesion, such dishonor violates the core values inherent in good leadership training.

Unfortunately, USAFA officials quickly ran into trouble when they tried to construct ways to return honor to their assault-tainted environment. This started with naming their honor code problem as the presence of dishonorable perpetrators among them. To this end, all appropriate means were to be used to apprehend and discipline these dishonorable perpetrators of sexual assault. According to the Honor Code, it became mandatory for any individual within the USAFA environment (military or civilian) having credible knowledge of a sexual assault to report this to the Chain of Command (hierarchy of reporting). While subject to their own internal hierarchy, chaplains are outside this Chain of Command because they offer privileged communications.

Cadets were required to report knowledge of assaults, and that relied on understanding the issues. All four thousand cadets were required to attend early morning breakfast meetings to learn definitions of sexual assault, consequences for perpetrating an assault, procedures for responding to knowledge of an assault, and how to get help if they were victimized. Memoranda were distributed detailing definitions, reporting procedures, and motivations for taking the situation seriously. In the words of Brigadier General John Weida, Commandant of Cadets, "I have challenged the Cadet leadership to lock arms and solve this crisis.... How? By locking arms as a team, leading by example, enforcing all our standards, and identifying and helping to eliminate

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those among us who refuse to live by our warrior ethos" (original italics) (Weida, 2003b).

The intended destination of any knowledge of sexual assault is the Academy Response Team (ART)—the interdisciplinary team designed to attend to all formal charges of sexualized violence. It is the ART that has the power to engage the institutional resources to attend to the matter. This includes support for both victims and alleged perpetrators and evidence collection for the purpose of building a prosecutorial case. Having information about an assault and not reporting it (with the exception of penitential and some legal communications) is itself an Honor Code violation. This is true for all members of the USAFA community. Chaplains are exempt from this requirement and as such are the only supportive professionals in the environment who can offer unqualified support to the survivor. Because USAFA names the sexual assault problem as dishonorable actions taken by any member of the USAFA community, attending to the problem requires uncovering the identity of perpetrators and all relevant details.

Intervention in a dishonorable sexual assault matter raises the importance of investigating the allegations of assault. When any member of the USAFA community reports knowledge of an assault, all the power of the environment is turned toward disciplining the assailant. As such, caring for the survivor is at best secondary to the process. Rather than naming the assault problem as the victimization of members of the environment or violence against those with little power (approaches that can benefit a survivor), USAFA approaches the problem as an Honor Code violation. By removing the right of privileged communication from caring professionals, far fewer people with institutional power can be advocates for the survivor. When sexual assault is institutionally defined as an Honor Code violation, USAFA becomes the victim and the subject of attention. USAFA becomes the "owner" of the trauma, not those who actually experience the embodied violence. The true survivors become sources of information used to "heal the environment"—heal USAFA's honor. When honor is the victim of sexual assault, healing for the true survivors is either a means to the institution's healing or a by-product of the system's healing. In this framework few (if any) survivors will heal while in the system.

Reporting Anyone having knowledge of sexual assault at the Academy

i-s required to report this information. Exempt from this are chaplains.

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Officials at USAFA are clear that this differs from the process used in the civilian sector. "In the profession of arms, warriors have a responsibility to the whole, a responsibility to take care of teammates; that means victims need to get proper care across the board and perpetrators cannot be tolerated on the team" (Weida, 2003a). This mandated reporting policy has several implications. First, to gain access to any military sponsored (and therefore free) medical, mental health, academic, or legal resources, the survivor must report the incident. A survivor has limited professional options if they cannot or will not report. Even the nearest civilian hospitals have working agreements with the base that compel them to report knowledge of an assault. Second, when a victim reports an incident, the matter becomes an official "ART case." Survivors themselves are referred to as "ART cases." In an environment that values uniformity and group cohesion, any singling out, particularly because of vulnerability or weakness, is problematic. The desire for success and achievement will thus keep survivors from reporting. Third, again, only the chaplain has the right of privileged communication and can serve the cadet without the cadet's being designated an "ART case." Fourth, if a survivor wants to talk with someone in confidence but does not want to talk with a religious professional, they have no other options at the Academy. Not all chaplains understand that they are being asked to serve this different role. Unfortunately this means that some chaplains will use access to survivors as an opportunity for bearing witness to their faith. This can keep even religious cadets from talking to a chaplain. Fifth, in reporting, a survivor loses control over her or his story—a story of the subjugation of their body—and thereby control over their body, when she or he talks to anyone beside the chaplain. Sixth, once a survivor makes a report and the survivor becomes an "ART case," legal proceedings automatically start. In the civilian world, a survivor may report an assault to the police, even undergo a rape-kit examination, without bringing formal charges against a perpetrator. In the Air Force, there is no distinction between requesting medical attention, getting protection, and starting a legal process to bring formal charges against the perpetrator. This is also true for cadets who seek medical attention at the local civilian hospitals.

When sexualized violence is defined as an Honor Code violation, mandatory reporting serves to right the wrong done to the Honor Code and the institution, not the victim of the assault. Naming the violence in this way serves to silence survivors. At USAFA less than 20 percent of survivors report or bring formal charges against their perpetrators (Associated Press, 2005). USAFA procedures are in place to increase

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knowledge of violence and violators. To root out perpetrators, privileged communication was removed. This has not served survivors. Neither has it brought healing (that is, honor) to the Academy.

The power of the Air Force to compel anyone to come forward with knowledge of sexual assault at the Academy does not stop at the base checkpoint. In April 1, 2005 Jennifer Bier, a civilian rape counselor at a Colorado Springs Rape Crisis center, was subpoenaed by the Department of Defense for her counseling records related to an alleged sexual assault victim. On May 28, 2005 a U.S. District judge issued an arrest warrant for Ms. Bier for refusing to turn over her records (Foster, 2005; McCloskey, 2005). The judge ruled that an alleged perpetrator's right to a fair trial trumped Bier's claim of patient confidentiality; in other words, the survivor's needs were only secondary to those of the perpetrator. The end does not justify the means. In the words of Martin Buber (1947, p. 7), "The use of unrighteousness as a means to a righteous end makes the end itself unrighteous; injustice as a means to justice renders justice unjust."

Research clarifies why removing privileged communications does not work to produce a healing end. Reporting happens more often and in a timely fashion when the survivor is assured of confidentiality with professionals. More survivors will report sexual assault within six months of the violence if they know they will have control over the information (Berkowitz, 2004). Having control of the information can only happen when privileged communications can be guaranteed. While USAFA has set out to assure that apprehension and discipline will follow sexual assaults, the means (obligatory reporting) to the desired goal (reestablishing an honorable environment) are not only ineffective and unjust but they compound the problem.

Interdisciplinary Response to Survivors The Academy Response Team plays a pivotal role in the Academy's

reaction to any information about sexual assault. Membership on the ART includes top administrative officials, JAGs (Judge Advocate Generals, that is, military attorneys), nurses, investigators, a civilian victim advocate, and chaplains. In December 2003,1 was invited to present information to the ART about working with survivors. Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of their work, I engaged the ART in an exercise intended to help them explore the complexity of their task. Distortions about rape play a significant role in how the rape event is understood, how people respond, and how the victim heals. It

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is therefore important to identify the standards by which rape cases are evaluated. In an effort to uncover these standards, I asked the members of the ART to describe a fully credible rape case and the "ideal," that is, most believable, victim. This would be a situation in which these professionals would hold no doubts about the case and could proceed, clearly knowing and interpreting the evidence. Members of the ART all described a victim with visible wounds, the perpetrator's use of a weapon, credible bystanders, a perpetrator with a known history, and a victim with a stellar past. The attorneys spoke of a victim who consistently tells her story in the same order, with the same details, and with no fabrications about subsidiary things (like being evasive about how much she had to drink or whether she initially agreed to engage in consensual intercourse/foreplay). The nurses spoke of seeing visible signs of shock (including responses ranging from flat affect to hysteria) and finding retrievable evidence from the rape-kit exam, such as torn clothing, bruises around the genitals and anus, semen, and skin under fingernails. Investigators spoke of crime evidence—both from the scene of the crime and on the survivor's body—and credible bystanders. Chaplains listed reactions of shame, self-doubt, despair and fear accompanied by questions of theodicy and betrayal.

As the group shared the details of the "ideal" victim and scenario, three things became clear. Firstly, none of their real current cases fit their ideal cases. In truth, members of the ART were forced to admit that the standards by which they were evaluating survivors' stories were unrealistic and unhelpful. Secondly, facts important to one professional were not necessarily important to another; and thirdly, what provided proof for one professional often introduced doubt for another. For example, mental health professionals are aware that trauma survivors tell stories in circular ways. Remembering different details with each telling is expected. When someone is in the acute phase of their trauma, linear point-A-to-point-B recounting is nearly impossible because the trauma survivor blocks details. This block can be an important coping mechanism (Leslie, 2002, p. 52). However, to a legal professional, circular proclamations can be evidence of lying or, worse, malingering ("intentional production of false or grossly exaggerated physical or psychological symptoms motivated by external incentives such as avoiding military duty..." [American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 739]). Attorneys need details of a crime to fit together the same way with each telling. Introduction of new information or changes to the story introduce the possibility of doubt or lies. For their part, chaplains entertain survivors' questions of ultimacy and theodicy: Did I do

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something to deserve or bring this evil upon myself? Is God trying to tell me something? Where was God in the mess? Chaplains may assume that survivors will blame themselves and struggle with the purpose and meaning of their despair. Theologically, self-blame highlights human finitude, loss of human agency, and the struggle with evil; legally, it points to culpability.

As the interdisciplinary ART shared their thoughts about "ideal" rape cases, they gained a clearer sense of their task. Their mandate was to help survivors report, prosecute, and heal from the assaults, enabling others to report, and in the end decreasing (even eradicating) assaults. Their struggle was to find a rubric, a language, and a common set of procedures or expectations that would allow them collectively to work on behalf of the victims. They were discovering that the very disciplines that informed their work and their goals created untenable blocks to their group mandate.

In truth there is no way to get around these blocks, but there are ways of working with them. To do so, we needed to explore how each disciplinary paradigm (theology, law, and medicine) helps its members to suspend the disbelief that follows in the wake of misleading cultural myths about the culpability of survivors of sexualized violence. While no discipline expects perfection (although they may hope for it), each discipline has built into it a way to work with spurious details, evidence, or behaviors that might cause confusion or doubt, and evidence that just does not fit the wider picture.

Suspending disbelief is an important task for survivors, care providers, and caring communities. Survivors need to suspend their disbelief that comes from believing the cultural distortions about sexual assault (i.e., women secretly want to be assaulted, women signal a desire to be assaulted by dressing provocatively, women say no when they really mean yes, etc.).4 Knowing the facts and distortions about assault can help them understand and name what happened and see the connection between their struggle to heal and society's impact on their recovery. Care providers must suspend disbelief if they are to be good enough (that is, safe enough) listeners (not colluding with the perpetrator by blaming the victim) and creative enough to help the survivor find hope. Practically speaking, when a care provider suspends disbelief, she believes in the face of disbelief, has patience in the face of the survivor's shame and confusion, is an advocate without taking over, creates a safe space without requiring the survivor to feel safe, and sides with the survivor when questions of doubt would have her keep her distance.

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Attorneys are about the business of constructing a completely plausible story; doubt experienced by survivors signals culpability. Chaplains, on the other hand, are about believing, supporting, and advocating. They expect survivors to struggle with doubt.

Caring communities must suspend their disbelief so that they can help survivors reclaim specific communities as places of safety and support. When a faith community or community of friends suspends disbelief, they recognize that they must compassionately cross into realities that are private, intimate, and confusing. Communities that support survivors adopt policies of hospitality based on deprivatizing, truth-telling and bearing witness to a survivor's suffering (Fortune, 1988, p. 220).

Consent and Risk Management The question of consent plays a significant role in how a survivor

heals (Fortune, 1983, p. 37). The manner in which consent is addressed is quite specific in a military environment. In both civilian and military contexts, a sexual assault survivor's attempt to make sense of her or his experience is complicated by their personal struggle with whether they somehow unknowingly consented to the assault. This can leave them blaming themselves and second-guessing all their decisions leading up to the assault. To help a civilian survivor attend to these questions of consent, care providers can help the survivor clarify the difference between vulnerability and responsibility. For example, in a hurry to get to your parked car, you cross the street without looking and get hit by a car. While your decision to cross without looking made you vulnerable to harm, it does not imply that you asked to be injured. Being vulnerable to harm does not make you responsible for it. Too often we gather evidence of assault cases by looking for someone's culpability. If the victim behaves in ways that leave them less in control of their body or their environment, we see them as responsible for the damage done. Helping a survivor distinguish between actions that left them more vulnerable to those in the immediate environment and those that imply they consented to the violence can be important to their healing process.

The USAFA conversation about consent and agency of the survivor is not one of vulnerability and responsibility but risk management. Cadets are choosing a life that includes significant risk and the possibility of violence. Leadership training in this environment includes taking this into account by attending to risk management. Risks are considered normative in this environment but need not keep cadets from their

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tasks. The Academy trains cadets so that their vulnerability to harm is greatly reduced. Being a leader means learning to attend to personal safety and the safety of the whole unit. If a cadet chooses to ignore risk management by acting in ways contrary to their risk management training, they are held responsible for opening themselves to unnecessary harm. In other words, when cadets ignore their risk management training, they are morally responsible for the outcome. This notion is significant to the Academy's understanding of sexual assault and subsequent investigations because once a cadet is trained to understand sexual assault, they become responsible for it if it happens to them. Casting sexualized violence in terms of risk management implies a moral imperative of those who are "enlightened."

While important for preventing violence, a risk management approach does not help cadets who are assaulted. Such a notion of enlightened responsibility blames both the hypervigilant survivor who could not ward off violence and the survivor who "chose" not to heed the warnings. Maintaining safety is not the moral imperative of a survivor when a person with power (in this case, the perpetrator) does not abide by the moral imperative to do no harm. When risk management is linked to consent, it relies on an illusory understanding of a cadet's power. First, cadets do not have equal access to power or institutional backing as they respond to the environment. Younger cadets are more likely to be victimized by an upper-class assailant because they have fewer resources for resistance. Second, because of the hierarchical structure, it is untenable for a cadet to say no to a higher ranking student or officer even if they believe the request or demand is unreasonable. Third, alcohol consumption, a factor closely linked with sexual assault, plays a significant communal role in the lives of young American adults. Because alcohol use is so prevalent in military academies (as well as other institutions of higher education), cadets who choose to abstain from drinking are considered countercultural. Being countercultural is not a goal for USAFA cadets unless they identify an alternative culture that gives them support and credibility, for example, religious communities. Fourth, it is illusory to think that all cadets will play by the rules. Living by the book (attending to risk management) does not mean others will. This risk management theory is never applied to a perpetrator's actions. Fifth, a great yearning of young adults is to belong to a community that can help give them meaning. Avoiding risk is not a motivation for cadets when the community itself values courage. Choosing the safe way is neither brave nor strong and may jeopardize the cadet's standing within the community. Sixth, risk management requires vigilance, and

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vigilance is tiring. Because women are more likely than men to be assaulted, women cadets at USAFA are held more accountable for risk management. And finally, bad things can and do happen even when we are vigilant. Risk management is important in preparing women and men to live in a violent world. It is not an effective tool to understand consent or to care for the survivor once she or he has been violated.

Pastoral Implications When chaplains are the sole source of privileged communication

for survivors they are institutionally located to play a central role in a survivor's healing. Chaplains require advanced training in order to understand legal, psychological, medical, and spiritual dynamics for survivors. This training must include regular briefings about changing policies and implications. Because chaplains are agents of privileged communications they should expect to work with cadets who want no religious or spiritual engagement. If a chaplain cannot provide such a service, they should refer to a chaplain who can.

The Academy tacitly defines sexualized violence as dishonorable behavior against the institution. As such, survivors play a secondary role in naming the problem and are required to help restore the Academy's honor, even if that means sacrificing their own needs for the cause. Chaplains can best serve survivors by helping them understand this operative dynamic and encouraging them to define their violent experiences in ways that will help their healing process. This can include naming the betrayal, confusion, rage, and unfairness felt by the survivors. While these definitions need not be approved by the chain of command, survivors may need help understanding and negotiating their "dishonorable" feelings.

Beyond the chaplains, the Academy provides no formal resources for survivors who will not come forward. Chaplains should explore with all survivors the formal and informal resources they have among friends, family, religious professionals and civilian service agencies to help their healing processes. Willing families and individuals in local faith communities can be a helpful option. Chaplains would be well served to have working relationships with colleagues who are not subject to the authority of military justice.

Suspension of disbelief is important work for anyone who is affected by the distortions about sexual assault survivors and their trauma. Suspending disbelief will always be a part of the work of chaplains advocating for survivors of sexual assault. Chaplains must

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help survivors work out how they suspend disbelief (friends just can't hurt friends, can they?) and understand when it is particularly hard. To do this, chaplains must work out the 'hows' and 'whens' of their own disbeliefs; for example, how can I avoid judging the survivor's decision made before the assault?

Interdisciplinary work with survivors of assault allows for better care by unearthing operative distortions and unnamed assumptions. This can be beneficial for a survivor's healing. Working alone may allow caring professionals to bring about fast (that is, efficient) responses but not necessarily accurate or healing outcomes. When possible care providers should work collaboratively with professionals from a variety of disciplines. Such cooperation can strengthen the care they provide.

A supportive network of people coming from different disciplines will always have differing agendas. Working together on behalf of the true victim (as opposed to the "ideal victim") must mean attending to the tensions caused by differing disciplinary goals. It is not the responsibility of the survivor's story to mend gulfs between disciplines. To attend to survivors, interdisciplinary teams must intentionally set aside agendas that do not directly serve the survivor.

The Air Force Academy is a highly regimented environment that values honor, integrity, and service before self. Women and men sexually assaulted in this environment need pastoral care that understands the intricacies and demands of the environment. The task of the chaplain as pastoral care specialist is to help survivors claim their right to be treated honorably, reclaim a sense of being a whole person, and serve the community because they are an integral part of it.

References American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic Statistical

Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC, Author.

Berkowitz, S. (2004, June 3). Preventing sexual assault in the Armed Forces. Testimony before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Total Force.

Buber, M. (1947). Ten rungs: Hasidic sayings. New York: Schocken Books.

Fortune, M. (1983). Sexual violence: The unmentionable sin. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press.

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Fortune, M. (1988). Forgiveness: The last step. In A. L. Horton & J. A. Williamson (Eds.), Abuse and Religion: When Praying Isn Ï Enough (pp. 220). New York: Lexington Books.

Foster, D. (2005, April 2). Rape counselor slams Air Force: 'Extreme double standard' cited over subpoena for files. Rocky Mountain News, p. 24A.

Leslie, K. J. (2002). When violence is no stranger: Pastoral counseling with survivors of acquaintance rape. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

McCloskey, M. (2005, June 9). Judge refuses to protect civilian rape counselor from military arrest. The Associated Press State & Local Wire.

Pentagon details school sex assault study. (March 18, 2005). The New York Times.

Weida, J. (2003a, June 6). Commandant's Guidance 06-3. Briefing distributed within the USAFA.

Weida, J. (2003b, September 24). Commandant's Guidance 09-7. Briefing distributed within the USAFA.

Endnotes 1 For a detailed exploration of this see Leslie (2002). 2 The right to define information as a matter of conscience belongs to

the care seeker/penitent. 3 For more on the limited privileges in the psychotherapist-patient

relationship, see Jaffee ! Redmond, 116 S. Ct 1923 (1996) and Military Rule of Evidence 513.

4 For more on distortions about rape, see Leslie (2002, p. 44f).

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